It is well known that Brighton Center for Recovery Foundation, founded in 1948 and incorporated in 1950, can easily claim to be one of America’s first addiction treatment hospitals.  It was also the first in Michigan.  What may be less well known is that Brighton’s founder, Harry Henderson, had much help and involvement in the establishment of Brighton Center for Recovery from Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Even more fascinating and supportive of Brighton Center for Recovery’s claim to have pioneered the treatment of addictions in North America is the fact that the same community leaders, lawyers, judges, physicians and political leaders who were founding trustees of Brighton Center for Recovery had already amassed nearly a decade of 12 step substance abuse experience by 1950! Brighton’s predecessor institution, the Bloomfield Hills Sanatorium founded in 1943, was established by the same board under the aegis of the Michigan Alcoholic Rehabilitation Foundation incorporated in 1950. So, accounting for the name change and the fact that the demand for treatment caused the same organization to outgrow its original location in

Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, Brighton in fact preceded the earliest of other rehabilitation centers by at least seven years, and was open and actively treating soldiers returning home with serious drinking problems and post traumatic stress from World War II.

Demand was so strong that the board of the Michigan Alcoholic Rehabilitation Foundation foresaw the need for a spacious campus, and acquired the present 92 acres east of the city of Brighton. The site was home to Glen Lore Manor, a women’s home established in the 1930s. From that point on, we were known as Brighton Center for Recovery. The rest is history.